2014 Super Bowl Top-Line Analysis (Jan 19th – Feb 7th)

The 2014 Super Bowl is now ten days past, so it’s a great time to gauge the top-performing advertisers based not only on pre-week and Super Bowl Sunday performance, but also post-week lift. As a result of the game’s vast reach, it has become a very attractive and expensive opportunity for companies to market their product(s). Based upon this significant investment (4 million dollars per 30 second in-game spot), and the importance of its return, Millward Brown Digital conducted a top-line analysis to measure the impact the advertising had on visitation to each company’s brand site. This is the second annual installment of this analysis – for the 2013 results – click here.

The 2014 Super Bowl is now sixteen days past, so it’s a great time to gauge the top-performing advertisers based not only on pre-week and Super Bowl Sunday performance, but also post-week lift. As a result of the game’s vast reach, it has become a very attractive and expensive opportunity for companies to market their product(s). Based upon this significant investment (4 million dollars per 30 second in-game spot), and the importance of its return, Millward Brown Digital conducted a top-line analysis to measure the impact the advertising had on visitation to each company’s brand site. This is the second annual installment of this analysis – for the 2013 results – click here.

To be included in the analysis, the company must have advertised during the game and must have a measurable online presence. For example, Subaru was not included because it did not advertise during the game on Fox (Subaru advertised during the Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet) while Doritos was not included because of low visitation to its corporate site fritolay.com.

The following results are based on Online Daily Reach, a measure of how many Unique Visitors visit a website – as a percentage of all U.S. Internet Unique Visitors online, on a particular day.

Key Trends:

Based upon the last two year’s success of advertisers pre-releasing ads (most notably, Honda’s 2012 CR-V and Toyota’s 2013 RAV4 ad), the majority of advertisers attempted to do the same this year

While some of these efforts had an impact on Daily Reach (due to limited competitive interference), only Chevrolet was able to maintain elevated performance after the game

Unlike last year’s spikes by Ram and Jeep the Monday after – the greatest spikes in Daily Reach were realized the week before (e.g., Axe, Hyundai, SodaStream) and on Sunday (e.g., Maserati)

Top Performers:

Chevrolet – Super Bowl sponsor Chevrolet benefited from a lift beginning on January 29th with its ad pre-release, and maintained it through Tuesday (coincided with the #PurpleYourProfile campaign and World Cancer Day)

Hyundai – driven by the pre-release of both of its ads, Hyundai Daily Reach spiked significantly before the game and surpassed its 2012 performance when it had five ads

Maserati/Jaguar/Chrysler – Maserati.com and Jaguarusa.com Daily Reach spiked more than others on Super Bowl Sunday, while Chrysler.com Reach spiked the Monday after

SodaStream/Axe – each brand paced Non-Auto advertisers with significant spikes in Daily Reach from ad pre-releases the week before the game

TurboTax – benefited from a steady increase in Daily Reach coincided with its ad pre-release on January 21st, which it maintained until the week after the Super Bowl Sunday on February 2nd

Lastly, Esurance’s decision to advertise immediately after the game paid off with a 120% spike on Monday – driven by its #EsuranceSave30 sweepstakes

Looking Ahead:

As both advertised and non-advertised companies seek to calculate the ROI of Super Bowl advertising, they need to go beyond branded site visitation. Areas of additional competitive investigation should be:

About Tom Lucido:Tom Lucido is the Director of Client Services at Millward Brown Digital. He is a graduate of the MA program at Wayne State University in Industrial Organizational Psychology. Connect with Tom on LinkedIn